“I visited de Freitas,” Pitt told him quietly. “He equivocated. First he said it was Angeles who broke off the engagement, then he admitted it was he. I have been considering how to prove it either way without raising even further malicious speculation.”
“It is too late,” Castelbranco said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what happened or who is behind it. I cannot think who would say such things, or why they would. I fear it is some enemy I have made who is taking the cruelest possible revenge on me.”
“If that is so, there may be something Special Branch can do,” Pitt began, then realized he might be offering a false hope. “What makes you think this?”
“Someone has said that her death was not a terrible accident but a deliberate act of suicide.” Castelbranco had difficulty keeping his voice from choking. “And suicide is a mortal sin,” he whispered. “The Church will not bury her with Christian rites-my … my child is …” The tears slid down his cheeks and he lowered his head.
Pitt leaned forward and put his hand on Castelbranco’s wrist, gripping him hard. “Don’t give up,” he said firmly. “That decision is hasty and may be born of serious misinformation.” He tried to keep the contempt for men who would make such a cruel decision-childless men without pity or understanding-out of his voice and knew he failed. He didn’t want to add that grief to Castelbranco’s all but unbearable burden. Now, above all else, the man needed his faith.
“Perhaps this should be the subject of a proper inquiry after all,” he said. “If such a thing is being alleged, then the discretion I have tried to exercise may be pointless.”
“It is,” Castelbranco said hoarsely. The tears were now running down his cheeks. He was too harrowed to be self-conscious. “It has been suggested that she was with child, and the disgrace of it drove her to take both their lives. That is a double crime, self-murder and murder of her innocent babe. I don’t know how my wife can live with it. She is already dying inside. I fear that would …”
His eyes searched Pitt’s face as if to find some hope he could not even imagine there. He was teetering on the edge of an abyss of despair. “I need the truth,” he whispered. “Whatever it is, it cannot be worse than this. I loved my daughter, Mr. Pitt. She was my only child. I would have done anything to make her safe and happy … and I could not even keep her alive. Now I cannot save her reputation from the mouths of the filthy, and I cannot save her soul to heaven. She was a child! I remember …” He lost command of his voice and faltered to a stop.
Pitt tightened his grip. “I know. My own daughter is willful, erratic, hot-tempered one moment, tender the next.” He could see Jemima in his mind. He remembered holding her as a baby, her tiny, perfect hands clinging to his thumb. He remembered her discovering the world, its wonders and its pain, her innocence, her trust that he could make everything better, and her laughter.
“She can seem so wise I marvel at her,” he went on. “Then the instant after she’s a child again, with no knowledge of the world. She’s a baby and a woman at the same time. She looks so like my wife, and yet when I look into her eyes, it is my own I see looking back at me. I can imagine what you are suffering well enough to know that I know nothing of it at all.”
Castelbranco bent his head and covered his face with his hands.
Pitt let go of his wrist and sat back in his chair, silent for several seconds.
“I have a certain degree of discretion as to what I can investigate,” he said at last. “As you are the ambassador of a country with whom we have a powerful and long-standing treaty, it could be in the national interest that we do not allow you to be victimized in this way while you and your family are in London. That I can do, as a courtesy to you as the representative of your country.”
Castelbranco rose to his feet awkwardly, swaying a little until he regained his balance.
“Thank you, sir. You could not have offered more. I appreciate your understanding.” He bowed and turned round slowly before walking upright to the door. Once outside he closed it softly behind him.
Pitt shifted only slightly, to look out his window, to bring order to his thoughts. He had meant what he said: he could not grasp the enormity of the man’s pain, his helplessness that his child had been destroyed both on earth and, in his belief, in heaven as well; and he had been unable to do anything to prevent it.
Pitt was not sure what he believed of heaven. He had never given it much consideration. Now he was certain he did not worship a God who would condemn a child-and Angeles was little more than that-for any sin, let alone an unproven one, and for which she had already paid such a hideous price.
Castelbranco must be wrong about God’s nature. Such judgment was a law of men, who flexed their muscles to dominate, to keep the disobedient under control, to frighten the willful into submission. God must be better than that, or what exactly is His mercy for?
But that was an argument for another time. Nothing would bring Angeles back. The truth might restore at least her good name, and perhaps help to find some way around the bitter damnation of the Church, the judgment of men who, by their very calling, had no children of their own, no understanding of the endless tenderness a parent feels, no matter how tired, frustrated or temporarily angry.
Did any parent ever put his or her child beyond forgiveness, truly? He could not imagine Charlotte doing so, for all her impetuosity, her high hopes and at times instant judgments, hot tempers, impatience, ungoverned tongue; no, she would defend those she loved to her last breath.
He smiled as he thought of her. She was exasperating, sometimes even a professional liability with her crusading ideas, and, in the past, her incessant meddling in his cases. But she was never, ever a coward. She might have been a lot less trouble if she had been, and a lot safer. And, he admitted, a lot less help. But without question, he would never have loved her as he did.
Heaven help him, was Jemima going to be the same? At three years younger, Daniel was already more levelheaded; Jemima, however, would instinctively, without thought or planning, leap to his defense, right or wrong.
One day she would be a mother like Charlotte: protect first, and chastise afterward. Punish, but forgive. And having forgiven, she would never mention the offense again. Charlotte had once sent Daniel to his room without supper for carrying a grudge after a matter had been resolved.
Pitt knew now at least where he would begin. He rose to his feet and called for Stoker. When he arrived, Pitt gave him his task. Then he went alone to see Isaura Castelbranco.
He caught a hansom with ease, and all too rapidly made his way through the busy, jostling streets to the ambassador’s residence. Perhaps Castelbranco had prepared her, because Isaura received Pitt without any excuses or prevarication. He was asked to wait in the private study, where mirrors were turned to the wall, pictures draped with black and the curtains on the windows pulled all but closed.
Isaura came in quietly. The only sound he heard was the click of the latch as the door closed. She stood straight, but she seemed smaller than he remembered, and her face was bleached of all color except the faint olive of her complexion.
“It is kind of you to come, Mr. Pitt,” she said with a slight huskiness, as if she had not used her voice for quite some time, after so much weeping.
“The ambassador asked me to look into the events leading up to Miss Castelbranco’s death and find out whatever facts I can,” he explained. In the face of her dignity it would be faintly insulting to be anything but direct. “I expect you can tell me at least some things that I do not know.”
A slight movement touched her mouth, almost a smile.
“My husband is deeply grieved. He loved his daughter very much, as did I. But I think perhaps I am a little more realistic as to what may be done.” She looked down for a moment, then up again, meeting his eyes. “Of course part of me wishes for revenge. It is natural. But it is also futile. Anger is a quite understandable reaction to loss. And he has lost his only child. You did not know her, Mr. Pitt, but she was lovely, full of life and dreams, warmhearted …” She stopped, unable for a moment to keep up her brave demeanor. She turned half away from him, concealing her face.
“As you may know, I have a daughter myself, Senhora Castelbranco,” he said. “She is fourteen and already half a woman. I suppose that is why the case matters so much to me. I could easily be in your place.”
“Please God, you will not be.” She turned back to him slowly. Something in his words had allowed her to reclaim at least a semblance of self-mastery. “If you were, you might feel the fury my husband does, the desperate desire to clear our daughter’s name from the slander that is being spread. But your wife would tell you, as I tell the ambassador; we are helpless to bring any charges. It will only prolong the speculation and the gossip. It will cure nothing.”
